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Friday, July 31, 2009

More on Referendum 71: secret signatures

From Pam's House Blend, more about Referendum 71. Remember, if enough signatures were gathered (which is questionable), it will put a referendum on the ballot asking the voters to approve the expanded domestic partnerships bill.

We must VOTE "APPROVE" to preserve the Domestic Partnership Expansion Law of 2009 (SB 5688). Yes, I said APPROVE. This is due to the way the ballot was worded by the Attorney General:REFERENDUM 71 Ballot Title Statement of Subject: The legislature passed Engrossed Second Substitute Senate Bill 5688 concerning rights and responsibilities of state-registered domestic partners [and voters have filed a sufficient referendum petition on this bill].Concise Description: This bill would expand the rights, responsibilities, and obligations accorded state-registered same-sex and senior domestic partners to be equivalent to those of married spouses, except that a domestic partnership is not a marriage.Should this bill be:Approved __X__Rejected ___......

There has been some misinformation that if we don't vote APPROVED, the entire DP system will be repealed. This is false. Referendum 71 is about approving an incremental enhancement to existing DP law. Existing DP law will remain intact no matter what.

Let's hope it doesn't come to that. Not surprisingly, the opposition are trying agin to hide their hatred under the cloak of anonymity. They tried the same thing in CA, and were fortunately thwarted. Despite their claims that PropH8 supporters would be harrassed, they weren't. And if we're talking harassment, howabout the ultimate harassment of denying a citizen their right to marry, or the right to protect their family? Remember just WHO the real victims are here!

Democracy only works in the sunlight. Or as my mother would say, if you are ashamed to be known for doing something, that is a clue that perhaps you shouldn't have done it.

Another reason for secrecy may be the reports that the signature-gatherers lied about the petitions, and claimed that signing them actually supported GLBT rights (Again, from Pam' House Blend. They may not want to have people who support GBLT rights finding out their signatures were collected under false pretenses. A version of this also happened in CA where marriage equality opponents would show up to pro-equality rallies and tell people to vote YES on PropH8 if they supported gay rights.

Finally, the referendum supporters stand to make money off the sale of those names and addresses to political campaigns, etc etc, if they aren't public. There's a simple explanation for their claims of victimhood. It starts with G and it ends with D and it spells GREED.

This leads me to wonder at the values and integrity of a movement that is based so heavily on lies and misleading people. If they don't have sufficient confidence in the rightness of their cause so that they have to lie about it, what does that tell us?